I'm a design student and working on my prediploma. as a scientific topic i have to complete "sympathy between players & characters." I'm analysing how a positive, emotionally engaging relationship between the player and his character can be established. As one fact, I define sympathy for being crucial. It does great work for an "emotional immersion" into the character.

Although I am analysing narrative games in this context, I would like to ask you as roleplayers:

------------------------------ how would you describe your emotional relationship to your character? what do you "feel" for him/her?- which kind of criteria make you feel sympathy for him/her?- how far do you rate your character as "autonomous", how far do you see him as a part of yourself?- assuming, a scale exists in which 0 means "actor" in terms of having no influence on the character (theoretical maximun) and 10 means the oposite, an avatar representing yourself without boundaries or restrictions given by the system. Where would you put your favorite character-type numerically in order to reach a maximum of inversion and fun-to-play? Could you describe why?----------------------------

i'm very interested in your opinions and thoughts. you may also raise genereal questions or suggestions.Thank you very much for reading/replying!

I think before I or anyone here could give any meaningful answers we need to know what you mean with "narrative games", "roleplayers", "character", and "character-type" because I believe our definitions may vary.

With that out of the way, I think you're asking your questions on a very high level, so I'll respond with a very high level preliminary response:

A character is one of the means through which I can influence whatever we have going on as a play group. So the character is basically one of the tools I use to contribute to that collaborative experience. Usually a character is the most important of the tools at my disposal.How I relate to the tool is largely a function of how effective it is, how I relate to the thing produced by the tool, and how I relate to the play group.